Measuring outward orientation in LDCs: Can it be done?

In recent years abundant evidence has been put forth to show that something about a country's trade policy stance improves economic performance. However, less examined is the question of what exactly that trade policy something that matters for performance is. Examination of the link between various empirical indicators used in the literature to measure trade policy stance reveals that, with minor exceptions, they are pairwise uncorrelated. This finding raises obvious questions about the their reliability in capturing some common aspect of trade policy and the interpretation of the empirical evidence on economic performance.